Who wants to be a game tester?

[PoPPeR]

I always wanted to be one. I mean, you get paid to play video games right? Well some guy in my class yesterday is a game tester at the EA office in the bay area, and after talking with him it kinda made me have second thoughts. He said he's spent the past four months, 5 days a week, 8 hours a day, playing Tiger Woods 2005.

640 hours playing tiger woods 2005... I'd quit before the first 100.

Would you want to be a game tester if you had to play games for 640 hours before moving on?

 

[fs5]

I was one at Sega. It's basically glorified factory work.
I had to test World Series Baseball 2k1 for DC and Ecco the Dolphin<shiver>

EA and Sony are the worst, Sega actually treats their testers good compared to them.

edit: some more thoughts.
If you want to break into the video game industry it's tough. It's very nepotistic in that they hire within the industry. So if you want to become a designer or programmer this is basically your way in the door. (Artist is easier to break in with your portfolio.)

 

[FleshLight]

Nope. I read this article in EGM about those testers and they get paid diddly squat to do stupid things in the game. They will try to find out all of the bugs in the game by doing the stupidest things, such as running a car into a wall and leaving it there, accelerating, for 20 minutes.

 

[sygyzy]

I think Nintendo Power was the first to make game testing seem so glamorous. How many game testers do you know past the age of ~25. How many make over $35k a year? It's often regarded as one of the lowest engineering positions. Just below QA

 

[SilthDraeth]

How much did he get payed?

The thing is, if you start off as a tester, you get to move up. While I played SWG I met the VP of Vivendi Universal, and one of his employees, and the employee said he started off game testing, and now he is basicaly a project manager, or something, directing the development of games. So he has people working for him now, and he gets to more or less say yes and no to what the programmers make.

 

[NikPreviousAcct]

You don't get paid. You play games before they're released to find bugs and report them.

 

[yobarman]

Game testing is the grunt work of the Gaming industry... you don't really need skills to do it, jsut a lot of patience. Playing a game sounds fun, but not if it sucks and you're playing it for 40 hours a week.

As a matter of fact the whole gaming industry kind of sucks. IGDA white paper shows that breaking into the industry is brutal. Long hours, especially during crunch time, and non stop stress. it's only after you've been in it for a while and climbed up the ladder where it's actually satisfying.

Of course, this is just my opinion, but reading that white paper made me rethink breaking into the game industry.

 

[virtueixi]

Originally posted by: Nik
You don't get paid. You play games before they're released to find bugs and report them.

I guess Socom and Socom 2 didn't have any!

 

[BCYL]

I would never want to be a game tester... It sounds cool, but you play the game over and over and over again until you find all the bugs... once you think you are done, you play it again to make sure you didn't miss anything...

I know a couple of people who did game testing and they hated their jobs... long hours, crappy pay, very repetitive...

 

[crazycarl]

testing for EA must be the worst job ever...
you know that even if you do find a bug, they will probably never fix it.

 

[Ketteringo]

Originally posted by: SilthDraeth
How much did he get payed?

The thing is, if you start off as a tester, you get to move up. While I played SWG I met the VP of Vivendi Universal, and one of his employees, and the employee said he started off game testing, and now he is basicaly a project manager, or something, directing the development of games. So he has people working for him now, and he gets to more or less say yes and no to what the programmers make.

Paid.

 

[Wheatmaster]

i personally would never want to be a game tester. It's like the actor and actresses for porn, the one of the most excited activities of life becomes your job

 

[Ikonomi]

I'd like a job as a game tester, simply because it's an entry level position from which you can work your way up in the industry.

 

[dighn]

no i imagine it would be extremely tedious and can possibly forever damage your ability to enjoy games

 

[PoPPeR]

Originally posted by: crazycarl
testing for EA must be the worst job ever...
you know that even if you do find a bug, they will probably never fix it.

haha, yeah i shoudl've asked him who the fvck tested MVP Baseball cuz that game... wow... best baseball game ever, but it could've been 100x better if some simple and obvious bugs were fixed. I found the bugs in 2 hours of playing

 

[stnicralisk]

Originally posted by: Nik
You don't get paid. You play games before they're released to find bugs and report them.

You do get paid. Blizzard pays 6.75 an hour.

 

[Ns1]

my friend is a game tester for vivendi universal

BS in CS from UCI

he's been playing crash bandicoot for 40 hours/week for teh past like 6 months. evidently they're doing time trials now to see who can beat the game 100% the fastest.

Gotta break into the industry some how

 

[gigapet]

only if i had an unlimited supply of weedbrownies and potable water and visine.

 

[SkunkApe]

Depends on the company. I'd definitely test for EA. Definitely.

 

[Rent]

I didn't get paid when I was testing for Gearbox, however, I did drink and eat sizeable amounts of various things from their snack room. All of us did Wasn't a full time testing job though, just some cruch time testing.

 

[xSkyDrAx]

Originally posted by: SkunkApe
Depends on the company. I'd definitely test for EA. Definitely.

You obviously haven't read the thread.

 

[everman]

Testing sucks, just go get into a crappy mmorpg beta and see how long you can keep at it. If you want to be a game programmer then get some experiance by making mods.

 

[Cattlegod]

so long as i had a bag of chips and a fridge stacked with mt dew, i'd love to be a pro gamer it would sure beat the stuff i'm doing now 5days/50hours

 

[imthebadguy]

i dont have the time

 

[Yanagi]

why? Because you're a spare time analysist?